Magpie ‘selfies’: ioShutterPro – remote DSLR trigger for the iPhone

I’ve been experimenting with ways to remotely trigger my camera and thus not scare off the birds that drink from our bird bath. Enter ioShutterPro – an app for the iphone along with a lead that connects the phone to the camera.

Magpie larks

The app enables several ways to control the camera, including by sound, shaking the phone, bulb for long exposures, by timer or by time-lapse – enabling those great flower opening sequences – which is its main advertised use.

There is also a related app called ioShutterCam from the same guys at enlightphotopro.com that enables you to do all these things just using your iphone camera – no need for the big DSLR camera for that one!

All this came about when a couple of young magpie larks came to drink at the bird bath one hot day. They were chirping away happily so I pulled out the camera and quietly entered the kitchen hoping to catch them through the window. But no, as soon as I came into view they took off like startled magpies!

Time for a better setup. I pulled out the tripod and focused the camera on the bird bath, connected the ioShutterPro lead to the phone and the camera, set it on sound trigger and before long the magpies were back. This time, as they called to each other they took their own photos – maggie ‘selfies’!

Magpie larks

Here is the setup I used

ioShutterPro app

This setup could be used for many types of sound triggered photography, such as self-triggered jumping shots making yourself look weightless – just be sure you have a soft place to land!

What would you use a sound triggered camera for? Let me know in the comments 🙂